Marvin’s heel-clicker’s are becoming the norm out East. – Words by: Dan Lamb – Photo by: Simon Cudby
Heading into the 2015 Eastern Regional 250SX Championship, everyone had Red Bull/KTM’s Marvin Musquin on or near the top of their Championship favorites list, but I don’t think anyone thought he would be quite this good. The former two-time MX2 World Champion has been dominating what most consider a deep class and has now won four of the first five Eastern Regional main events. With that, and Star Racing/Yamaha’s Jeremy Martin not qualifying in Indianapolis, the Frenchman now leads GEICO/Honda’s Justin Bogle by 16 points and Martin—who’s still third—by 37 points. While some might want to hand the #25 the trophy, last year’s Eastern Regional series taught us that the series not over til it’s over.
To put it into perspective how dominant Marvin has been, in his four wins, he has led fifty-nine of a possible sixty laps. The KTM rider has made it look easy—get the start and disappear into the distance. Indianapolis last weekend was the first race he won without the holeshot, but he wasn’t far off. After passing Martin Davalos, Marvin took off to a twenty-two second gap and crossed the line with another heel-clicker celebrating yet another smooth victory.
After the race, MotoXAddicts’ Chase Yocom caught up with Marvin to talk about his night in Indianapolis. You can hear what Marvin had to say in “Race Rewind” below.
We’re here with Marvin Musquin. Marvin, pretty much a perfect day today. How was it out there?
Yeah, awesome. The track was really technical. We had great dirt this weekend. It got rutted and it was soft and really tacky. I really like those conditions. It makes the track tough. You’ve got to find different lines and the whoops were really tough. That’s how I like the track, so you have to see and do different things to be fast. It’s not like everybody was doing the same thing. In the rhythm section, you could do different options. It was awesome. My starts weren’t the best, but I made some really nice passes and I’m really happy about my riding tonight. My last maybe six laps I couldn’t see where the second place was. It was really weird. A lot of guys were in trouble and went down and stuff like that. I was trying to be safe and stay up front.
Being from Europe, you’re kind of used to a lot of ruts and stuff. Do you think that really helped you out tonight?
I’ve been out of Europe for many years now so I’m not really used to ruts, only on the races, and at practice I’ve been practicing in California the years before, and I feel like being in Florida helped me a little bit better. I used to race the SX Tour France Championship and it used to be really tacky and rutted, so I think my technique is good for that.
It’s been a while since we’ve seen people jumping through whoops. Were you skimming them early on and then jumping them later? How much were they breaking down?
With whoops like that, they were actually really big, so it was tough to jump through it in practice. Then, during the night races, they were getting pretty beat up, and you could skim them, but it was hard to be consistent to do it every lap. So going 3-3-3 was a perfect way, and I knew I could do that every single lap no problem because I like that better.
I heard you made some bike changes with the suspension. What did you do there?
Yeah, we made some changes because you have to adapt the bike to the whoops. They’re really far apart, so you need to work on the compression on the rebound and stuff like that. The team did a great job, suspension guys, and my bike was working well. I couldn’t be more happy.
With Jeremy Martin not qualifying tonight, that was a good night for you to go out and get a win and really extend your points.
Yeah, I know Jeremy is a hard worker and he’s a good rider, so it is obviously hard to see him not going to the main event and be unlucky like that. That proves that it’s Supercross and anything can happen. You have to go through a heat race and be on your game and be consistent and do the things right. Yeah, it’s tough he didn’t make the main event, but there is Justin Bogle still on the podium behind me so it’s not over.
Alright, thanks again for your time. Congrats.
Thank you.
